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Would Raising Taxes on Sugary Sodas and Fatty Foods Make Us Healthier?

What would it take to make Americans eat better and live healthier lives? The answer may be higher taxes, according to a provocative article recently published in the New York Times (7/24/2011).

The author, food writer Mark Bittman, suggests that a 20 percent increase in the price of sugary drinks by adding a federal soda tax would result in a 20 percent decrease in consumption over a decade. This alone could prevent one and a half million Americans from becoming obese and almost half a million from becoming diabetic, which in turn could save the government a whopping 30 billion dollars in health care costs. Could it really be so easy?

There is little disagreement that radical changes in the typical American diet are necessary if we can ever hope to win the fight against our obesity crisis. Banking on the food industry’s “voluntary” measures has long been proven fruitless. Food manufacturers are not concerned with issues of public health but their bottom line. They will continue to sell products that are most profitable, whether they are damaging to people’s health or not. And they will keep doing so – until another force skews things otherwise. That “other force” could be the federal government acting in the interest of the common good.

Taking on the role of a powerful public health advocate would indeed be a departure for our government as we know it. The production of unhealthy foods has long been heavily subsidized with tax dollars. The beneficiaries are farms (or rather large agricultural corporations) where corn is grown for making high-fructose corn syrup, an ubiquitous ingredient of most processed foods.

Rather than supporting the making of foods of poor nutritional quality, the federal government could turn the tables and impose heavy taxes on sodas, French fries, doughnuts, candy and other snack items. The resulting revenues then could be applied to subsidize produce prices and make staples like seasonal greens, vegetables, fruit and whole grains more affordable. Healthy items that are now prohibitively expensive could be offered not only cheaper but also in many more locations, including low-income neighborhoods, which are notoriously underserved by supermarkets chains and grocery stores.

A program like this, of course, would upset the food industry, which is well connected in Washington, to put it mildly. It would also cause a great deal of resentment among those who are principally opposed to tax increases of any kind or for any purpose and who would see such a step as another attempt of the “nanny state” to meddle in their private affairs. We all have heard these arguments ad nauseam.

Still, safeguarding the public’s health is one of the responsibilities government is entrusted with. Why would the food we eat be of less concern than the water we drink or the air we breathe? There is no good reason why government should not get involved when the nutritional health of its citizens is at risk, which is no different from any other dangerous threat (like oil spills or acts of terrorism).

As it has been shown time and again, appealing to individual responsibility does not suffice. Especially poor people are disproportionally disadvantaged in their abilities to make better dietary choices by themselves. For many it is harder to find fresh fruit than Froot Loops. Junk food is often the only option, not because it’s cheap (that too), but because there is nothing else within reach for the elderly, the handicapped and those who depend on public transportation to get around. What’s needed are structural changes, and those can only take place with new public policies.

Some states have already imposed taxes on sodas, but those are mostly ineffective sales taxes. A better way would be to incorporate higher taxes into the shelf price, so-called excise taxes, so customers realize the cost increases before they make their purchasing decisions, not afterwards.

Even in today’s anti-tax climate, there is a growing realization that generating extra revenues from soda- and fast food consumption could lead to a welcome windfall for cash-strapped state- and city governments, comparable to legalized gambling. New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia have already taken steps in this direction. One study conducted by Columbia University predicted that adding a single penny tax per ounce of sugary soda drinks would save the State of New York three billion dollars in health care costs over the course of a decade. Another study showed that a two cents tax increase per ounce would reduce the obesity rate among children and adolescents in the state of Illinois by 18 percent, save $350 million in health care expenditures and add $800 million to the state’s coffers annually. This money could be returned to the local communities for spending on public gyms, pools, parks and bike paths as well as for providing food banks with better quality supplies.

The costs for treating weight problems and other related diseases are staggering. They are already in the hundreds of billions and they keep rising. The lion share will be borne by the federal government, meaning all of us taxpayers. So it is in our interest that these catastrophic developments will be stopped by any means necessary.

We have been here before. In the historic tobacco settlement of 1998, American tobacco companies finally gave in to the government’s demands to curtail their marketing efforts and cooperate with anti-smoking campaigns. Many other factors have contributed as well to the radical decline of smoking in the U.S., including federal and state tax policies. The overall results are quite impressive: Between the mid 1970s and the mid 2000s, cigarette use fell by 57 percent. We have no reason to think that this success story cannot be repeated in the fight against obesity.

Timi Gustafson R.D. is a clinical dietitian and author of “The Healthy Diner – How to Eat Right and Still Have Fun™,” which is available on her blog http://www.timigustafson.com and at amazon.com. Her latest book, “Kids Love Healthy Foods™” is now available in e-book format, also at www.amazon.com﻿

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..